Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
CFIF on Twitter CFIF on YouTube
More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 18, 2024 • 03:11 PM

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
The Medicare-for-All Hoax Print
By Betsy McCaughey
Wednesday, September 12 2018
Republicans who failed miserably to communicate a case for repealing and replacing Obamacare cannot make that mistake again. They need to warn voters about the dangers of single-payer health care.

President Barack Obama made a stunning policy shift on Friday, endorsing "Medicare-for-all"  a single-payer health system  for the nation. Most Democrats contending for the 2020 presidential nomination, and many Dems vying for Congressional seats this fall, are backing it, too.

But beware. They're pulling a bait-and-switch. The phrase "Medicare-for-all" sounds as American as apple pie. A new Reuters poll shows 70 percent of Americans respond to it favorably. That's because the public isn't getting the truth about what it means. The actual plan these Democrats are pushing doesn't look anything like Medicare. They're slapping the Medicare label on what would be dangerously inadequate health care.

For starters, it would rip away private health coverage from half of all Americans, including the 157 million who get their insurance the old-fashioned way  earning it through a job. Conveniently, Democrats are forgetting to tell you that private insurance would be banned under their scheme; employers would be barred from covering workers or their families. Union members and executives who bargained for gold-plated private plans would lose them and have to settle for the same one-size-fits-all public coverage as people who refuse to work at all. Even immigrants here illegally would get the same benefits. What's the point of working?

"Medicare-for-all" is no longer a fringe proposal favored by the extreme left. It's gaining steam. Republicans who failed miserably to communicate a case for repealing and replacing Obamacare cannot make that mistake again. They need to warn voters about the dangers of single-payer health care.

Under "Medicare-for-all"  the legislation introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders  Americans would be automatically enrolled in the public program. Kids would be enrolled at birth.

The new scheme would guarantee hospital care, doctors' visits, even dental, vision and long-term care, all provided by Uncle Sam. But that's only until the money runs out. Sanders' bill imposes hard-and-fast dollar caps on how much health care the country can consume yearly. That means limiting mammograms, hip replacements and other procedures. Sanders' bill creates new regional health authorities to curb "overutilization" of care.

Seniors and baby boomers are big losers under "Medicare-for-all." Whenever boomers have to vie with younger people for health resources, they get pushed to the back of the line. In the United Kingdom's single-payer system, boomers are turned away for hip replacements. They're told they have fewer years of life ahead to benefit from costly medical procedures. British women are livid because many are being refused breast reconstruction after lumpectomies and mastectomies.

At least in Britain, people are free to buy private insurance and go outside the government system for care. But that's not true under "Medicare-for-all." You'd be trapped.

Dems backing Sanders' bill point to Medicare's cost efficiencies and say they can be expanded to the whole population. That's ridiculous. Medicare pays only about 88 cents for every dollar of care, shortchanging hospitals and doctors. These providers take the payments because they can shift the unmet costs on their patients with private insurance. But if everyone is on "Medicare-for-all," no cost-shifting is possible. The only alternative is lowering the quality of care  longer waits, limited access to technology.

Single-payer advocates don't deny it. Stanford economist Victor Fuchs argues in the Journal of the American Medical Association that curbing the use of mammograms, new drugs and diagnostic technologies would make single-payer affordable. In short, go low-tech. But millions of American women have survived breast cancer thanks to high-tech screening and new gene-based therapies. Low-tech medicine would be a death sentence.

The United Kingdom's rock bottom survival rates for breast, lung, ovarian and pancreatic cancer are the result of that low-tech approach. British newspapers are declaring, "Cancer shame as UK survival rates lag behind the rest of the world."

Is that what we want in America?


Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and a former lieutenant governor of New York State. 
COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

 

Notable Quote   
 
"It's a rematch.President Biden and former President Trump each hit a key marker last week, clinching enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee of their respective party.The outcome of the general election will come down to a handful of states, as usual.The map maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ lists seven contests as toss-ups."Read the entire article here.…[more]
 
 
— Niall Stanage, The Hill
 
Liberty Poll   

Do you support or oppose a government-imposed U.S. ban of TikTok?